What I’m struggling to understand is how it could ever have been considered plausible. Here’s my reasoning:
1) In a singularity, a non-zero quantity of matter/energy is contained in a zero volume
2) Therefore, a singularity is infinitely dense
3) Time is slowed down by dense concentrations of matter.
4) Presumably, time comes to a halt entirely at a singularity
5) If time is at a halt, nothing can happen
6) If nothing can happen, the singularity cannot expand.
7) If the singularity cannot expand, then how could we be here talking about it?
Please help me out here if you can shed any light on it. I presume there’s something I’m misunderstanding.
]]>Simone Weil was a celebrated French Marxist and social activist who died a Christian mystic. Leon Trotsky admired her intelligence and she became an intellectual influence on Pope Paul V1.
Albert Camus wrotein 1951:
Simone Weil, I still know this now, is the only great mind of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing.
For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure.
She wrote:
Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417
Do you have the humility to admit the possibility that you have a supernatural part that has not yet opened? This part if it exists is unnecessary for our daily lives described as within Plato’s cave but yet is what makes human conscious evolution into the “New Man” as described in the Gospels, a human potential?
]]>http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/29/politics/americans-elect/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
]]>Is—————————————————-Ought.
I have yet to hear anyone connect them. I think the best and most consistent moral position is to own ones preferences as preferences and act upon them. Without calling them anything else.
I don’t like it but I do accept it.
IS and OUGHT are easy enough to connect.
Here is the formula:
IS + Moral Theory = OUGHT (in the sense of the moral theory)
As an example of IS lets use the natural fact:
the Earth is rotating around the Sun.
Now lets take a really simple made up objective theory.
the Natural-Fact Theory: We have reason to believe natural facts.
This theory is adequate to produce an ought. To be clear when we apply the theory we should specify its sense in the sentence. In this case we will call it the natural-fact sense.
In the natural-fact sense, we ought to believe the Earth rotates around the Sun.
Once someone specifies the sense, the is and the ought are connected by the definitions within the theory that the sense refers to.
Although it is true that we do not possess all of the facts in the universe, and one day we may find the World does not rotate around the sun, and we are all in a vat of fluid like the Matrix and images have been fed into out brain all along, for now, the Earth rotating around the Sun is a natural-fact and the Natural-Fact Theory was objectively applied in the sentence.
It is true that in other senses, one may conclude we ought to believe something else, or we should not use ought at all. That is why it is important to specify the sense of moral theory that is being used when invoking ought.
Another argument I hear often is “maybe the criteria is objective, and you may be correct in that sense, but you subjectively choose to use the theory.” Although that is a point worth considering, that argument does not change the fact that in the Natural-Fact sense, we ought to believe the World rotates around the Sun.
]]>Many people on low income don’t choose the healthiest food to feed themselves and families, I’ve been there myself before, buying the cheaper processed food rather than the more expensive organic fresh fruit and veg.
So is the solution to make the healthy options cheaper…..or slam us all with higher tax on unhealthy food?
Look who wrote the article…he gets everywhere…
]]>Religious intolerance has been in steady decline. In 1924, 91 percent of the students in a middle-class American high school agreed with the statement-‘Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it’ By 1980 only 38 percent agreed. In 1996, 62 percent of Protestants and 74 percent of Catholics agreed with the statement-‘All religions are equally good’-an opinion that would have baffled their ancestors a generation before, to say nothing of those in the 16th century.
Interesting stats I thought, and Pinker’s book is huge on stats.
I think this shows the trend that the worlds religions are slowly becoming more tolerant of each other, which means that the absolutisms and certainties (especially of Monotheisms) are fading. Eventually perhaps all the worlds Religions will blend into a type of global Deism, and become totally individual and socially benign.
We can only hope.
]]>I’m a christian who meanders over to this site now and again. I’m posting because I noticed something interesting about the miracle of the sun at Fatima that may be of interest to the readers here. It seems that the miracle may have contained a message for Mr. Harris and all like minded modern sceptics.
About a decade ago, while an agnostic, I saw a television program that spoke of the miracle. Eyewitnesses claim they saw the sun “dance” about the sky, spin rapidly, change colors, and appear to fall to earth. When they told of the sun falling to earth, it was said to become a fiery red. This sounded to me like the sun becoming a red giant in fast motion(when a star gets old, they expand greatly, and their cooling surface takes on a red tint; sped up, it would appear to be hurtling earthwards). A curious thing, but at the time I didn’t think anything further of it. Some years later, after becoming a christian, I was reminded of Fatima, and thinking it might be logical for the God who created our well ordered universe to perform a scientifically oriented miracle by displaying a star’s life in brief, I looked into the matter. Sure enough, it turns out the eyewitness testimony is strongly suggestive that what they saw was the sun going through the life-cycle of a star in a mere few minutes time(though a more massive and colorful blue star).
And this is interesting because in 1917, the year of the miracle, science didn’t yet fully understand a star’s life, and wouldn’t until some years after, making the miracle a display of as yet unknown, scientific knowledge.
Which is ironic since Mr. Harris himself is wont to say, when speaking on religion, that God might have gone a ways toward proving his existence by revealing in scripture some theretofore unknown scientific knowledge, offering thereby compelling proof that the author was of a superhuman intelligence. Well, it seems that at Fatima an empirical truth of which humanity was not yet aware may in fact have been revealed - just what the atheist ordered(and a very proper miracle for a sceptical age).
I wrote up a piece on the web for anyone that might be interested. Its not quite one hundred percent finished. The url is http://lpzho-spaceholder.blogspot.com/. Don’t mind the url name, I wasn’t sure what to call it. I hope its clearly written and you find it interesting, or at least have a good laugh.
Lastly, and perhaps ashamedly, the article does possess one wiki reference, but it is only one out of eight, so please forgive.
L. P. Zho
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